


Captain Nemo & The World Revolution of 1875

by EmperorNorton150



Category: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Genre: (kinda), Alternate History, Captain Nemo vs. the forces of imperialism, Gen, Politics, Post-Canon, Revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:20:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28392294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmperorNorton150/pseuds/EmperorNorton150
Summary: In 1875 AD, the mysterious Captain Nemo emerged from the oceanic depths and declared open war upon all those who served the forces of oppression, all those who worked to keep their brothers and sisters in chains. He lit the spark that left the world burning in his wake, and blazed the path to the future.This is the story of the World Revolution of 1875.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 7





	Captain Nemo & The World Revolution of 1875

Compiled By

The Staff of the National Historical Institute

The League of Nations

German Social Democratic Republic

Frankfurt, 1898

**The Origin of the World Revolution: **

That the World Revolution of 1875 did not truly begin in 1875 is incontestable. The first verifiable sightings of Captain Nemo’s submersible the _Nautilus_ date back to 1866. His first encounters with the Civilized World occurred in 1867, with the _Monrovia_ and _Scotia_ incidents. Admiralty records unsealed after the Revolution have made it clear that the _Nautilus_ engaged and sank at least seven British warships from 1867 onward, though this fact was concealed from the general public by Her Majesty’s Government, and from 1869 a special task-force of the Royal Navy secretly patrolled the Atlantic reaches in a vain attempt to seek out and destroy this submarine pirate. The testimony of Professor Aronnax has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nemo’s monies funded the Cretan Revolt of 1864-1869, and it is strongly suspected that he extended assistance to a number of other revolutionaries during the years prior to the World Revolution. Ancient shipwreck gold was found on the persons on insurrectionary slaves in Pernambuco, in the Empire of Brazil; in the coffers of an Algerian Bey hunted down by the French Foreign Legion on the fringes of the Sahara; on the vessel of an Irish revolutionary apprehended smuggling guns to his compatriots by the Royal Navy; and in the safe-houses of half-a-dozen European anarchist and syndicalist groups broken up by the police between 1867 and 1873. But it is 1875 that Prince Dakkar chose to emerge from the shadows.

From the fragmentary reports of sea-monstrosities that filled the newspapers in 1866 to the more detailed report of the USS _Abraham Lincoln_ that confirmed that this menace upon the world ocean was a submarine machine, to Professor Aronnax's best-selling memoirs, inhabitants of the surface world had known of the mystery of Nemo. But it was just that; a mystery, an enigmatic story with no real connection to the lives of most people. Even most sailors never encountered the _Nautilus_ as more than a tale, or at most as a glimpse of motion far in the distance or a flickering light upon the waves. Imagine then, the terror that must have gripped the crew of the Dutch merchant steamer SS _Zeeland_ when the _Nautilus_ surfaced a mere dozen meters off her bow early on the morning of February 11th, 1875. A silent denizen of the deeps crossed over to the freighter and handed her flabbergasted skipper a pair of books. Both authored by Nemo, the first was entitled _Scientific Observations in the Deeps of the Seas,_ and chronicled the many biological discoveries made by the captain in his undersea wanderings. Upon the cover of the second were inscribed the words _My Testament._ Inside, Nemo laid out his political program for the first time. He denounced all forms of tyranny and imperialism, all types of servitude and slavery by which the labor of many is yoked to produce wealth for a few. He declared his intention to “cleanse the mother sea” of all those who would pollute her with acts of war and barbarism, and he called upon the great, silent masses of the people to rise up and liberate themselves. “Man is born free but is everywhere in chains” began the treatise. The _Zeeland_ made port in Lisbon three days later. For the nine days, the newspapers in every city in Europe led with stories on CAPTAIN NEMO’S OUTRAGEOUS ULTIMATUM. On February 23rd, the _Nautilus_ rammed the French cruiser _Triomphante_ a mile offshore of Loire, where she sank with no survivors. The First Atlantic Campaign had begun.

**The Revolution at Sea: **

Over the next two months, Captain Nemo cut a swath across the Atlantic. He sent nine British and three more French warships to the bottom in a series of bloody night-ambushes in the English Channel and the Bay of Biscay, bursting from the waves in the center of a squadron’s neat formation to gut an ironclad with the _Nautilus’_ s great beak before falling back into the depths, shellfire hammering the waters around him. The British lit beacon fires and set searchlights up upon the shorelines to scour the seas for him, but all they accomplished was to drive him further out into the grey northern waters. He slew an American frigate, the USS _Potomac,_ three hundred kilometers north of the Azores, before seizing and scuttling a pair of merchantmen loaded with tobacco and coffee from Central America. Unlike his merciless assaults on the ships-of-war, he allowed their crews time to board lifeboats before sending their hulls to the bottom. “These luxuries torn from the earth by servile hands will not grace the palette of some Duke or industrialist today” he sternly informed their miserable captains when they begged him to spare their ships. On March 30th, he cut one of the Transatlantic telegraph cables. Five days later the great submarine appeared in the Gulf of Guinea, where it scoured of commerce in short order. Five merchant ships carrying the plundered wealth of the Congo were sent to the bottom along with a British customs & excise cutter. On April 11th, he stopped and boarded a Portuguese brig bound from Angola to the Cape Verde islands with indentured laborers. He put the slavers to death and handed over the ship to the cargo, giving them a case of gold and a locker of arms and ammunition as well. Here in the heart of European Imperialism, Nemo seemed to feel an especial rage. For several weeks the _Nautilus_ terrorized the African coastline. Boarding parties descended on the coast to burn the customs stations at Ajudá, Lagos, Freetown, and Walvis Bay. On April 22nd he stopped and seized the SS _Ocean’s Pride,_ a steam liner bound for Cape Town. Nemo magnanimously put the passengers and crew ashore in Benin, but took everything they had of value and burned it with the ship, delivering a stern lecture to those who would go forth to steal a stranger’s land.

Meanwhile on that same day in Paris, delegates from the British Empire, French Republic, German Empire, United States of America, Kingdom of the Netherlands, Kingdom of Italy, Kingdom of Portugal, the Argentine Republic, and the Empire of Brazil put their signatures on the draft of a Treaty Securing the Oceans from Piracy and Brigandry, pledging to establish a unified task force to hunt down and sink the _Nautilus._ But even in a crisis, the wheels of diplomacy grind slow. While the Paris Convention still bickered over the details of the new squadron, the Royal Navy’s West African Station had the misfortune to stumble upon the elusive Nemo. In a furious gun-battle fought over the course of April 25th and 26th, the frigate HMS _Leander_ was sunk and the ironclad HMS _Battleax_ was crippled. The _Nautilus_ disappeared beneath the waves again, and would not reappear for several months. But by then, the nations of the West had bigger worries than a single rogue submersible.

Which revolutionary groups were directly funded and supported by Nemo and which were merely inspired by his manifesto and actions remains a controversial question even to this day. Given the chaos of the times, records were often lost, mislabeled, or destroyed. Often, the most sensitive information was never committed to paper at all. In some cases, the use of shipwreck gold to pay for expenses and purchase goods, or the presence of electric-pneumatic rifles or some other of Nemo’s devilishly clever weapons amongst their armory serves as clear evidence of contact between the aquatic Captain and his land-bound acolytes. But we are mostly forced to speculate. Whatever the details may be, it is clear that the great wave of unrest that swept through the world in the summer of 1875 soon outgrew any paltry conspiracy led directly by Nemo.

It is virtually impossible to state _which_ was the first spark in the conflagration. Suffice it to say that by July 1875, the Western Powers were facing opposition on a scale previously undreamed of. In Egypt, rioting _fellaheen_ were driven from Cairo by the Khedive’s troops and French police, but most of the small towns and villages along the Nile were soon impassable to all but the most well-armed columns. Mayan farmers rose in revolution across the Yucatan, refusing to send any more taxes to Mexico City and repulsing attempts by the federal government to restore order. Russian soldiers and government officials were ripped apart by mobs in the streets of Warsaw and Minsk; by summer’s end the new Provisional Government of the Republic of Poland held most of the old Grand Duchy of Warsaw and was raising volunteer battalions; attempts by the Czar to squash the revolt were hindered by insurrection in Central Asia and mutiny within the Imperial Army’s ranks. Perhaps this first great Rising was at its height in the Raj of India. It was well-known by then that Nemo has once been Prince Dakkar, a Hindi nobleman whose family had been brutally murdered by the _sahibs_ during the Great Mutiny. Throughout that long and bloody summer, riots blazed in Madras, Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi. Thousands died, both natives and colonizers as English and Loyal Indian regiments drowned the streets in the blood of martyrs. The Governor-General, Lord Northbrook was assassinated, and effective British government collapsed in much of Hyderabad and Orissa as local revolutionary committees seized power and the surviving _sahibs_ fled to the cities and forts. Worse was to come; rumors drifting in from Rio de Janeiro of an alliance of Amazonian Indians and escaped slaves wreaking havoc in the deep interior, a growing wave of unrest in Ireland, wildcat strikes sweeping the cities of the Ruhr Valley. Already, ministers and statesmen called it a “Second Spring of Nations” in private. But 1848 would soon be dwarfed by the blood-dimmed tide set to drown the world in 1875. And everywhere was the sigil of Nemo, the golden “N” emblazoned on a black field, carried on banners through the streets or dabbed in paint on the fire-blackened walls of a mansion or factory.

In mid-July, the _Nautilus_ emerged again in the Mozambique Channel and proceeded to single-handedly obliterate the Zanzibarian slave-trade. Over a dozen _dhows_ were sunk in less than a week, firearms were distributed amongst the staff and slaves of plantations along the Kenyan coast, and the palace of the Sultan was burned down with a strange alchemical fire. The small British protectorate collapsed into chaos as _Nautilus_ cruised into the Indian Ocean. On August 3rd, she appeared in the Bay of Bengal where she proceeded to carry out a winnowing of the oceanic traffic there. Eight merchant vessels found to be participating in the opium trade with China were sent to the bottom, as well as a steamer carrying troops and colonial administrators to Madras. On August 9th, the sleek, iron-gray skin of the _Nautilus_ broke the surface of the Hooghly River and that magnificent ship hove north upriver to the great city of Calcutta. The British government by now had posted a reward of £50,000 for the capture or execution of “the maritime terrorist and sub-nautical revolutionary, the self-styled Nemo”, but his ship was unmolested as it glided through the muddy waters. The authority of the Raj was broken here now, and his passage was cheered by the _dacoits_ and sepoys who now ruled this stretch of Mother India. On August 11th, the _Nautilus_ ’s electric engines wound to a halt in the roadstead of Calcutta Port.

**From Insurrection to Crusade: **

It is not known how many thousands gathered there to hear India’s native son speak. It is not known how so many _knew_ he was to break his silence. But amidst the burning ruins of the capital city of Victoria’s Indian Empire, Captain Nemo mounted the hull of his vessel and addressed his countrymen—along with the few hundred British soldiers and policemen still huddled in the ruins of Government House. For the first time in decades, Nemo spoke his true name. “I am Prince Dakkar!” he cried. “Son of India, driven into exile! Driven beneath the oceans to find refuge from the tyrants! But there I saw the Future!” Nemo talked for hours. He spoke of his past, of the murder of his family by British soldiers during the Great Mutiny, of the injustices and oppression inflected by the few upon the many in India and all over the world, of the ways in which those with guns and money ground down the masses into slavery. But he also spoke of the future. Nemo shared his vision, of a world in which man and woman were equal, in which everyone possessed the full value of his or her labor and an equal voice in his government. He spoke of a world in which everyone had enough to eat, in which no hand was raised against another in violence and no nation sought to rule another, no man had power over his brothers and sisters. And he spoke about what he had seen in his decades-long journey beneath the waves. Scientific marvels of nature never-before dreamed of, wondrous constructs of rock and coral, strange creatures, subterranean vaults and volcano. Three-quarters of the Earth’s surface lay beneath the waves, and Nemo told his rapt audience how all the wants of the world could be satisfied there without violence. Vast farms and fisheries to feed the masses, metals and ores pumped out of Earth’s beating hearts to fuel her factories, electricity enough to power the globe from the movement of the tides. War was nothing but the idle pursuit of the wealthy, competition a pointless game played by the powerful. “What has been does not have to be!”, his voice lashing the air like a whip. “What has been _must never be again!_ ” And then, without further ceremony, he walked below deck, and the _Nautilus_ reversed course, back into the Bay of Bengal.

From there he slid into the Strait of Malacca. The Dutch frigate HNLMS _Maartin Tromp_ was rammed and broken on August 16th, with two freighters bound for Europe with the products of the plantations of Java and Sumatra joining her over the next week. Commerce ground to a halt as every captain sought safe harbor in a blind panic. Not all were so unhappy at the coming of the _Nautilus_ however; riots consumed Batavia and Singapore as both local Indonesian and imported Chinese laborer took to the streets to burn and loot the property of their betters. As police fought to restore order, Nemo slipped through the Java Sea and into the Pacific.

The Pacific voyages of the _Nautilus_ are hard to trace, given the vastness of those Eastern Seas and the relatively “slim pickings”, as they say, that the seditious captain found. Suffice it to say that Nemo’s submarine surfaced off of San Francisco on September 14th. During his month-long absence, five North Pacific whaling ships vanished and the submarine cable connecting Port Darwin to Singapore was cut. In addition, it is beyond belief that the revolution which convulsed the Kingdom of Hawaii at this time received _no_ from the undersea malcontent. True, the 1874 royal elections had been continuous, and King Kalākaua was not popular, but whereas before opposition had been primarily from other noble factions, now popular unrest seethed throughout the streets of Honolulu. Foreign plantations were burned, royal police attacked, and chaos enveloped much of the islands. In other years, such a blatant attack on imperial privilege and international commerce would have brought condemnation and reprisals from the Great Powers. But with the true scope of the World Revolution now becoming clear, the tribulations of a small island kingdom were forgotten. By early September, the situation in Ireland had collapsed. Irish Fennians had risen in Cork, Limerick, and Dublin, and were steadfastly resisting the efforts of half-a-dozen British regiments to suppress them.

For five days, the citizens of San Francisco huddled in fear or took to the streets—depending on their political sympathies, as the _Nautilus_ cruised back and forth outside the bay, the strange luminesce of her engines lighting the sea on fire. Chinese coolies marched on City Hall to demand fair pay, and when the police opened fire the Orientals returned it with electric-pneumatic rifles. As the City burned, Nemo turned south. Telegraphs flickered across the continent, and columns of U.S. troops were dispatched from Indian Territory to restore order. But a furious President Ulysses S. Grant was forced to acknowledge that the United States Navy was unable to meet this menace at sea. At this time, the navy had only fifty or so vessels in commission, most obsolete warships left over from the Civil War. At the president’s urging, work on the five _Amphitrite_ -class monitors then under construction was accelerated, but it would still be many months before they would be capable of seeing combat.

By early October, Prince Dakkar’s voyage brought him to the Chincha Islands of southern Peru, whose guano mines had brought that Andean Republic so much wealth at the cost of so many lives. Freighters waiting to carry back their loads of fertilizer were burned at the docks, and the warehouses, watchtowers, and armories that fueled the extraction were destroyed by grim-faced parties of seamen who ascended from beneath the sea. To the miners, mostly Chinese and Pacific Islander indentured servants, Nemo left guns, gold, and political tracts. To the guards, he gave only death. When news of the disaster reached Lima several days later, the stock market crashed and the _Banco Nacional_ collapsed. Every ship of the Peruvian Navy was ordered to sea. The ironclads _Independencia_ and _Huáscar_ never returned.

**The First Step to a New World: **

On November 6th, the _Nautilus_ was laying waste to the small British settlement in the Falklands, but for once in this tumultuous year the actions of this world-shattering submarine were second-page news at best. On November 6th, 1875, the French Republic fell. Since the start of the World Revolution, France had been gripped by chaos. The new Republic was less than five years old, the government in power was monarchist in sympathies, and Imperial German troops still occupied much of the country. In the early days of the War, with French warships being sunk just off the coast of Brittany and Normandie, there had been a rough unity in support of the government’s position, but as Nemo’s depredations had moved to foreign seas, more and more of the _Républicains Radicaux_ began to voice support for his program. Memories of ’89 reawoke in a populace that had seen over fifty years of decay, compromise, and corruption since. In October, marchers took to the streets, and were met with gunfire from the gendarmerie and National Guards. It was less than five years since the crushing of the Paris Commune, and the citizens of the French capital knew the steps to this dance well. Barricades were thrown up across the boulevards, as rioters set shopfronts ablaze. Even then, the situation remained salvageable. Parisian radicals might rant and roar, but the great mass of the French peasantry was unlikely to overthrown a new government so soon. But Prime Minister Buffet, frightened by reports of protests spreading to Lyon and Dijon and rumors of spiraling discontent amongst the coal miners of Flanders, panicked. On October 16th, he requested aid from the German soldiers still stationed in northern France. As the first-trainloads of German riflemen steamed into Paris to reinforce the beleaguered police, the country exploded.

Moderate Republicans defected in protest, and the government lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies. French regiments mutinied at this “betrayal of the spirit of the nation”, and elected committees of enlisted-men publicly announced their refusal to turn their bayonets against fellow-countrymen. On October 22nd, President Patrice de MacMahon declared a state of emergency and assumed dictatorial powers. On October 24th he was shot dead. Buffet fled to England the following day. Chaos reigned for over a week, until a group of Deputies and military officers calling themselves the Committee of the Sovereign People seized power in Paris and declared themselves the provisional government of the People’s Democratic Republic of France. Their political program was shrewd. The new government moved to nationalize industry and provide public employment to the unemployed, as well as promising universal suffrage in the next elections and recognizing labor unions as the “rightful voice of the proletariat”. They confiscated the estates and fortunes of those magnates and nobles who refused to accept the People’s Democratic Republic’s legitimacy, but their National Militia kept order in the streets, preventing the mob rule and “reign of terror” of the Revolution of 1789 from recurring. Additionally, they combined this left-wing, populist radicalism with a repudiation of the Treaty of Frankfurt and an immediate ultimatum to the German Empire to withdraw all occupying forces from French soil.

Chancellor Bismarck of course did not even consider complying with this, and instead rushed tens of thousands more troops across the border. Fighting immediately developed across Flanders and the Franche-Comté between the Imperial German Army and rapidly-mobilizing units of the National Militia and the French People’s Army. On November 20th, Germany, Austria-Hungary, the United Kingdom, and the Kingdom of Italy formed a new Holy League, dedicated to “securing the future prosperity and peace of Europe against radicalism, socialism, anarchism, and sedition”. In response, France formally withdrew from the Treaty Securing the Oceans from Piracy and Brigandry, declaring that “Monsieur Nemo is an enemy to all oppressors, and thus a friend to _La Bella France_ ”. In making this volt-face, the Committee of the Sovereign People were perhaps helped by the fact that Professor Aronnax, once a guest of the good captain and a fierce apologist for his conduct, was serving on the Committee as Minister-Deputy for Science and Industry. The new French government received recognition from the Republic of Poland on November 13th, and on November 30th the _Stortinget_ of the Kingdom of Norway declared full separation from the rule of the Kingdom of Sweden and extended diplomatic recognition to the People’s Democratic Republic of France. Unrest continued to sweep all of the countries of the world, but in Western Europe it quickly began to grow into a true War. German columns drove towards Paris, only to be stopped in a series of extraordinarily bloody battles in and around Dijon and Troyes, inexperienced French patriots dying to slow down the relentless reactionary advance. Italian troops attempted to push through the Alps, but were dealt a severe defeat in the mountain passes outside Nice. On December 6th, the _Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands_ declared a general strike in opposition to “this imperialist war against a proletarian republic”.

**The Battle of St. Paul: **

But as Europe descended into the throes of the First Revolutionary War, what was our illustrious Captain doing? Nemo was fighting the worst battle of his life. The Great Powers of Europe may have been ruled by reactionaries and capitalists, but they were no fools, and they were bound and determined to protect the source of their power. While the _Nautilus_ was ravaging their colonies, they could tolerate it. They were not willing to permit the revolutionary submersible to return to European waters. Multinational flotillas of warships cruised the Mid-Atlantic, a guard placed to prevent Prince Dakkar’s passage. On November 13th, the _Nautilus_ ran straight into a squadron of eighteen British, Dutch, Brazilian, and American vessels cruising fifty kilometers east of the St. Peter and St. Paul Archipelago and commenced to accept battle. This would, however, be very unlike the early clashes of the World Revolution, when outclassed and obsolete European warships could only impotently fling shells at the surface of the depths from which Nemo sprung forth to gut their keels at a time of his choosing. Clever Nemo may have been, but he possessed no monopoly on intelligence. His enemies now sallied forth with curved iron plates bolted to their hulls to blunt the _Nautilus_ ’s beak, and from the decks of their warships catapulted “depth charges” into the sea; explosive cases which burst underwater to spill their deadly payload. The oceans roiled underneath the equatorial skies! Guns roared defiance, pillars of seawater leapt skyward, and engines screamed as the ships danced across the water. The Brazilian frigate _Amazonas_ and the American sloops USS _Saratoga_ and USS _Portsmouth_ were sent to the bottom, their hulls ripped open. Then, a hit! For the first time, the hull plates of the _Nautilus_ buckled, smashed inwards by the shockwave of an underwater explosion. The great submersible was forced to surface, lest she sink forever, and the sailors of the World scented victory. The British ironclad HMS _Audacious_ hove to, and lashed alongside her, parties of marines and bluejackets swarming over the rails, eager to capture the greatest prize imaginable.

But on the deck of the _Nautilus_ they were met by Nemo’s men, a silent brotherhood devoted the Captain and to the cause of World Freedom. With electric-pneumatic rifles silently barking, they cut down dozens of British boarders, before drawing steel and engaging in close combat. Much blood was spilled amidst the cut and thrust of the action, but the hardy Englishmen were at last driven back by the zealous defenders. _Nautilus_ ripped free from the grasp of _Audacious_ , blasting a hole in her flank and crippling the gallant ship as she fled her embrace. Then Nemo displayed another one of his tricks, flooding the ocean with alchemical fire. As the captains and crews of the warships fought to protect their vessels (and those of the HMS _Shah_ failed to), the submarine fled south upon the ocean’s surface; battered, bleeding, but alive.

It was a costly victory, but a victory nonetheless. At last, Captain Nemo’s devilish ship had been turned back. The demon Nemo had been proven to be mortal. It would have been better to have slain the treacherous anarchist, but his ship was crippled, and it would surely be many months again before he troubled the World Ocean again. Many a sigh of relief was breathed in the halls of London and Berlin and Washington D.C., as nervous ministers and generals turned their attention to squashing their “domestic difficulties”. Surely, with Nemo gone from the scene, these troublesome peasants and agitators would be quickly dispersed.

**The Return of Nemo: **

Native fisherman off the Angolan coast reported the _Nautilus_ running south on November 15th, still apparently unable to surface. British ships out of Cape Town patrolled the Cape of Good Hope, seeking to intercept her but for the second time in a year Captain Nemo successfully rounded the tip of Africa and dove into the Indian Ocean. In London, naval analysts confidentially informed their superiors that Nemo must be returning to his secret island base to affect repairs to his vessel. They recommended dispatching ships to search for this haven, but assured Her Majesty’s Government that it would be months before Nemo was in a position to threaten European waters again. Meanwhile, there were enough other problems to occupy the world’s statesmen. As the bloody year of 1875 drew to a close, Kraków was finally recaptured by Austrian troops on December 18th, pushing the forces of the Republic of Poland out of the city. Fighting in Northern France was already degenerating into a stalemate as the inexperienced men and women of the French People’s Army dug into crude defensive entrenchments and fought bitterly for every inch of soil. In neighboring Spain, King Alfonso XII had only taken power last year, after sixteen years of democratic rule, and as unrest broiled in Madrid and Barcelona, it became an open question how long he would keep his stolen throne. And on December 20th, citizen-soldiers of the Amazonas Republic captured the city of Manaus.

The world burned, and the world forgot Nemo—a mistake its masters would soon lament! Captain Nemo had no intention of retiring from the conflict for months or years while he restored his submarine to perfect condition. This was the _Götterdämmerung!_ Nemo would not abandon the People in the hour of their greatest need. It is probable that his crew had repaired _Nautilus_ to the extant that it could once again submerge by late November, as there were no more sightings after that. Nemo took no more prizes either, running his ship silent and deep, aiming to strike at his imperialist enemies from a direction they would never see coming. They should have. In his memoirs _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ , Professor Aronnax had documented the existence of the Lincoln Tunnel, stretching deep beneath the Sinai Peninsula to connect the Red and Mediterranean Seas. But scientific consensus held that this was a geological impossibility, an obvious exaggeration on the part of the good professor. The completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 essentially destroyed any remaining interest in searching for the phenomena. Thus, while British gunboats patrolled the canal itself to guard against intrusion by the Arch-Nemesis of Civilization, no-one was expecting _Nautilus_ to surface in the harbor of Port Said on Christmas morning.

Nemo’s men worked quickly. As the British and Egyptian authorities still gobbled in surprise, the crew of the Nautilus scuttled the pair of wooden gunboats in harbor, before professionally demolishing the dockyards and dynamiting the banks of the canal, not neglecting to cut the undersea telegraph line to Europe and distribute alms to the _fellaheen_ and fisherman of Alexandria and Port Said. Then _Nautilus_ drove east, deeper into the Mediterranean.

Thus, began the final phase of Nemo’s Campaign. Where before he had been content to snipe at the edge of the empires of the mammon, to bleed their profits and weaken their dominions, now the Captain struck at their heart of their power. _Nautilus_ dove through the sea like a shark. She took and scuttled three Italian freighters in five days, all laden with raw materials bound for the teaming factories of Manchester and Birmingham, where the proletariat slaved for their master’s profits. On January 1st, 1876, she rammed and sunk the Austrian ironclad SMS _Erzherzog Ferdinand Max_ just north of Corfu. A British squadron steamed rapidly from the English Channel to intercept her, docking at Malta to refuel on January 4th. That night, the naval base there was bombarded from the sea by canisters of alchemical fire. The facilities were badly damaged, and the ironclad HMS _Penelope_ and the frigate HMS _Endymion_ burned at the docks. From there, Nemo hammered across the Western Mediterranean. The French colony in Algeria had refused to acknowledge the government in Paris, declaring itself to be the Military Republic of French Algeria. But Captain Nemo could have no mercy on a nation built atop another people’s land, a nation dedicated to foul practice of colonialism. Seven steamers flying French Algerian colors were seized and burned, and the ironclad _Magnanime_ was rammed and sent to the bottom of Algiers harbor. Then _Nautilus_ turned north, and peaceably glided into Marseilles harbor. For the final time in recorded history, the Captain would speak with someone outside his silent brotherhood. For waiting for him there was Minister-Deputy Aronnax. The professor and politician boarded a small boat and was ferried out to the submarine, where he spoke to his old friend and former captor for several hours before returning to shore. No records exist as to what the two men discussed, though historians have speculated, noting that in the postwar years France took the lead in developing and distributing Nemo’s technological innovations throughout the world. On January 9th, _Nautilus_ silently ran beneath the guns of Gibraltar and vanished into the cold waters of the Atlantic.

**The End of the Beginning: **

On January 12th, _Nautilus_ resurfaced in the Irish Sea, where she sank two transports loaded with English troops bound for Ireland to fight the Fennians. Then she rounded Scotland, avoiding the Royal Navy patrols in the English Channel, turned south into the North Sea—and proceeded to rip the heart out of the European economy. On January 16th, the _Nautilus_ surfaced in Rotterdam Harbor, ripping the hull out of the Dutch guard ship HNLMS _Heiligerlee._ Docking facilities and docked steamers alike were engulfed in sheets of alchemical fire, while dynamite was used to blast apart the _Nieuwe Waterweg_ ship canal. She raced back to the open sea, leaving Europe’s largest port burning in her wake, the guns of the shore defense batteries fruitlessly trying to break open her armored back. Five days later, as the ships of the Royal and Dutch Navies searched high and low for her, she surfaced in the river Elbe. A detachment of Nemo’s men had boarded and hijacked a transatlantic steamer, which they proceeded to scuttle at the narrowest point of the Elbe, north of the Port of Hamburg, temporarily closing the third-largest port in Europe to traffic as well. The news hammered merchant lines, banks, and shipping cartels across Europe, as an economy already reeling from the unrest and revolutions now faced a new massive disruption. Nemo captured and scuttled nine more ships in the North Sea over the next week, easily avoiding the flotillas combing the seas for him, sending landing parties to destroy docks and customs stations in half-a-dozen smaller Dutch and German coastal towns, and ambushing the German armored frigate SMS _König Wilhelm._ Then, on January 29th, _Nautilus_ turned south into the English Channel. It is presumed that Nemo sought to hammer the Port of London or Southampton as he had already devastated Rotterdam. But that evening, she ran straight into a British minefield laid in the Straits of Dover.

 _Nautilus_ was quite possibly the most advanced ship ever constructed. Even today, our submersibles can only follow in Nemo’s pioneering footsteps. If given time and a proper repair yard, virtually any damage could be repaired. The Captain had neither. The explosions had shattered the structural integrity of his hull; once again his vessel could not submerge, and its armor was badly compromised. As British, Dutch, and German warships converged on him like vultures circling ‘round a wounded beast, he did the only thing he could do: he ran. _Nautilus_ turned north and steamed as fast it could—much slower than her usual flank speed, given the damage. But here in European waters, he could not outrun his pursuit. So began the Great Chase. Nearly three dozen ships-of-war steamed steadily after the battered submarine. The British, determined not to lose their prey this time, hoisted hot air balloons from barges, so as to maintain a constant watch upon the Prince of the Sea. Undamaged, _Nautilus_ could outrun any ship upon the surface. With gaping wounds in her flank, she could barely keep a few kilometers ahead, her electric engines her only salvation. For two weeks they ran north, across the North Sea, up along the coast of Norway, into the Arctic Sea. Gunfire punctured the sea whenever the pursuers caught a glimpse of their quarry, and _Nautilus_ turned and fought whenever a ship grew too unwary and strayed from the pack. Even now, in this final act, the Royal Navy paid in blood, as the ironclads HMS _Enterprise_ and HMS _Monarch_ plunged to the Arctic depths. But each day, the fleet grew closer and closer to the man who had set the world alight. Until, on February 24nd, they reached—the Maelström. The Naval of the Ocean, the great, eternal whirlpool in the Lofoten Archipelago from which no ship can survive. No sensible captain or admiral would hazard his ship in such a deathtrap, but Nemo had sworn an oath once never to return to dry land and never to surrender his vessel to the rulers of the surface. As shells and depth charges hammered the water around him, his ship leapt into the great tidal basin—and was gone. Since that day, there have been no confirmed sightings of the _Nautilus_ or it’s Captain.

The historical consensus remains that Prince Dakkar and his brave brotherhood perished together upon their marvelous ship that day. Others tell the tale that they survived, but with the Revolution set in motion, Nemo chose to return to his scientific studies deep beneath the oceanic depths. Until or unless the wreckage of the _Nautilus_ is found, it must remain a mystery.

**The Revolution Will Never Die:**

The imperialists believed that the death or disappearance of Captain Nemo would end the World Revolution. This was their fundamental mistake, and why the capitalist-aristocratic global order could not endure. They believed that history was written by the few, the mighty, that without their legendary leader, the People United would return to obscurity and obeisance. The same day that _Nautilus_ vanished over the edge of the Maelström, the French People’s Army decisively defeated a German force at the Battle of Verdun, pushing forward and liberating much of Wallonia. Two days later, Russian troops mutinied in St. Petersburg, turning their guns on their officers rather than shoot down striking workers. The British ships of the Armada that had pursued Nemo to his doom docked in London as riots swept through the capital, workers demanding better wages, Chartists demanding democracy, Irishmen demanding freedom; all united under the golden “N” on a black field, the universal symbol of a people who had suffered enough and would serve their masters no longer. Reports would soon start to trickle out of the former Confederate States, now under U.S. military occupation, of attacks on the Ku Klux Klan and other anti-Reconstruction militias and paramilitaries by bands of ex-slaves armed with electric-pneumatic rifles, high explosives, and a surprisingly deep purse. All across the world, the center could no longer hold.

On April 10th, representatives from the People’s Democratic Republic of France, the Kingdom of Norway, the Republic of Poland, the Socialist Republic of Spain, the Cretan People’s Republic, the Amazonas Republic, the Free State of Ireland, and the United Congress of a Free India to sign the Declaration of a League of Nations, committing their governments to the global struggle for freedom against reaction and imperialism. The congress was chaired by Minister-Deputy Aronnax, who would serve as its inaugural First Secretary, and was attended by the Anglo-German theoretician and journalist Charles Marx, who’s book _Captain Nemo’s Manifesto: Towards a Socialist Future_ remains one of the key contemporary sources on these events. As the League’s first act, it committed to sending weapons and supplies to the Lakota Sioux and Northern Cheyenne tribes of Dakota Territory who had risen in revolution against the American government’s violation of their treaties and their land. That June, the French Naval Ministry oversaw the laying down of hulls for the first six _Oceanus_ -class War Submersibles.

In the course of the one year-and-one-day long voyage of War that Captain Nemo made in 1875-1876, he accomplished a great deal. The _Nautilius_ destroyed thirty-three enemy warships, dozens of merchantmen, devastated numerous coastal towns and struck terror into the heart of oppressors and tyrants the world ‘round. But Prince Dakkar’s greatest accomplishment was in showing the People what was possible. By breaking free of the constraints of the world, by demonstrating the fragility of the bonds that held together civilization, he gave the People the vision and the will to shatter their own chains. The World Revolution would rage on for many years. In truth, it continues still, and will never end so long as man is fallible and prone to temptation. The quest to achieve the vision of the Calcutta Address can never be considered complete, can never be put aside. But in his voyage around the world, Nemo struck a blow at the heart of the Old Ways that could never be healed.

“What has been does not have to be! _What has been must never be again!_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> \- I've always felt that adaptations of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" focus too much on fighting giant squid and such and not enough on the fact that Nemo was (canonically!) funneling his wealth to various revolutionary groups and fighting a secret war against the British Empire.


End file.
